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IIM, bangalore wants to
go global but the government doesn’t want it to. On the
face of it, this looks like another HRD Ministry roadblock
to the autonomy of premier institutes. Well, this time the
ministry may be justified in putting its foot down. It is
true that the IIMs are not getting their priorities right.
They have much to do in India before diverting their
resources and attention abroad.
What are the concerns that IIMs should grant top priority
to? To begin with, generating good quality faculty. Then
setting up more campuses in India, especially in the
business hubs. There has to be much greater
industry-academia interaction and certainly more research to
improve pedagogy. Creation of the knowledge, skills and
practices suitable to Indian economy need immediate
attention.
The main concern today in the field of management education
in India is the skeletal faculty. There’s a famine of
quality teachers. The IIMs, funded by taxpayers money, have
failed miserably in responding to this need.
Every year about 70,000 students graduate from 1,000 odd
B-schools in the country. Taking a 1:10 teacher-student
ratio (the international standard), we need 7,000 trained
teachers. But the most optimistic current estimate of the
number of trained faculty is just about 2,000.
It’s private B-schools like ICFAI and MDI who have been
proactive in generating faculty. ICFAI has set up an
institute which offers a three-year programme to produce
good faculty. How difficult is it for each IIM to set up
such a centre and generate at least 50 quality faculty every
year? The short duration faculty development programmes (FDPs)
that some IIMs conduct are in no way a substitute for such
centres.
The second concern is the demand-supply gap of quality
programmes in India. There are over 1,000 B-schools in India
but not even 50 of these deliver quality programmes. Hardly
20 management institutes can be called integrated B-schools
— that is truly integrated with industry and not only
disseminating existing knowledge but creating new knowledge,
skills and practices that can have far reaching impact on
Indian economy.
Even among those which are integrated, the level of
interaction is low. For almost four decades the top IIMs
have been stagnating in terms of intake and programmes
offered. With superb infrastructure (each with about
100-acre campus and over 800,000 sq feet built-up area),
they have been producing only about 600 graduates annually
— far less than what our economy needs. Intake has been
increased only in the past few years, but it is still much
below international levels. This demand-supply gap has led
to mushrooming of incompetent B-schools. Over 1.5 lakh
students appear every year for the combined entrance test
(CAT) but only over a thousand get into the IIMs. The
admission is more of a process of rejection than selection.
As a result, a large number of high calibre students go to
second and third-rung B-schools or go abroad. Like Harvard
and Wharton, each of the IIMs should be taking in about
1,000 students. Location is a very important aspect of a
B-school, as to do relevant research they need to be in
proximity to industry. Thus the need for more IIMs in
business hubs. Strangely, this important parameter was
ignored in establishing IIMs in Lucknow, Indore and
Kozhikode which are suffering because of poor industry
interaction. By now Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and
Chandigarh should have got one IIM each.
Recent surveys have also shown the big gap between industry
expectations and B-school delivery. Many in industry feel
that B-school products are too raw and lack the soft skills
needed in current business environment. In fact, many
recruiters whom we have interviewed admit that they go to
the IIMs because they are assured of quality of intake more
than the value-addition to the existing skills and knowledge
of the students. The main idea behind setting up the IIMs
was to create entrepreneurs. How many entrepreneurs can IIMs
boast of? Our premier institutes need to focus more on
research in pedagogy, curriculum and industry interaction.
Setting up a campus is not the only way of increasing
faculty exposure to global practices. There is already a
mechanism in place to address this need: the faculty
exchange programmes where members teach abroad for a term
and tutors from abroad come to teach and interact with
faculties and students here. These kind of programmes need a
fillip.
True, the IIMs need to generate more revenue to pay their
teachers well but it is doubtful whether such campuses will
have great return on investments. In fact, one negative
outcome can be flight of talented faculty out of India.
There are many untapped avenues to generate additional
revenue for the IIMs in India. Besides increasing intake,
IIMs can introduce innovative programmes for the corporate
sector like the ISB (Indian School of Business) in Hyderabad
is doing. There is also scope to enter into new areas like
healthcare management.
None of the IIMs is ranked among top 50 in the world. The
best IIMs have not produced any path- breaking research in
over 40 years of their existence. The IIM brand that we hear
so much about has more to do with the credibility of the
admission process than the quality of faculty and research.
Clearly, the IIMs need to do more homework before going
abroad.
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